1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information terminal, a server, an information display system and an information display method for displaying history information about communications such as telephone calls and electronic mail.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventional information terminals such as mobile telephones can display history information about received or transmitted messages, incoming or outgoing calls, or about telephone-answering services on their screen. Thus, a user can perform various operations after confirming the history information.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a conventional information terminal inferred from an electronic mail apparatus disclosed in Japanese patent application laid-open No. 11-17734/1999. In FIG. 1, the reference numeral 11 designates a telephone circuit controller for controlling incoming and outgoing calls via telephone lines, and 12 designates a mail transceiver for transmitting and receiving electronic mail messages.
The reference number 13 designates an incoming history management section for recording an incoming history of the telephone such as telephone numbers and time and date of incoming calls; 14 designates an outgoing history management section for recording an outgoing history such as parties' telephone numbers and time and date of outgoing calls of the telephone; 15 designates a mail reception management section for recording a receiving history of mail messages such as parties' mail addresses and time and date of the mail; 16 designates a mail transmission management section for recording a transmission history of mail such as parties' mail addresses and time and date of the mail transmission; and 17 designates an answering management section for recording an answering history of parties' telephone numbers and time and date of incoming calls recorded in a telephone answering machine.
The reference numeral 20 designates a personal address book recording personal names and communication addresses of the parties; 21 designates an address book search section for searching the personal address book 20; and 24 designates a received mail list display section for displaying the list of received mail.
Next, the operation of the conventional information terminal will be described.
FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a received mail list screen 4 controlled by the received mail list display section 24 of FIG. 1.
According to the conventional technique, a user selects one of the received mail displayed, and selects a message “conversation with sender” displayed on the received mail list screen 4 of FIG. 2. In response to the selection, the address book search section 21 retrieves the telephone number corresponding to the mail address from the personal address book 20, and the telephone circuit controller 11 automatically dials the telephone number. Thus, the user can reply the originating party of the received mail by telephone with a simple operation.
With the foregoing configuration, the conventional information terminal can reply the party by telephone through the operation on the received mail list screen 4. However, since the information about the reply to the received mail is not recorded, a problem arises as to whether the reply to the received mail has been completed or not.
In addition, since the receiving history, outgoing history and the like are displayed separately on the screen, when the user communicates utilizing a plurality of different communication means, another problem arises in that the user cannot watch all the histories unless all the screens are displayed corresponding to the communication means. Furthermore, it is difficult for the user to learn the relationships of the histories.
The present invention is implemented to solve the foregoing problems. Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an information terminal, a server, an information display system and an information display method capable of displaying the communication history information in such a manner that the user can see at a glance whether the processing of the received mail, transmitted mail, incoming calls (telephone) and outgoing calls (telephone) has already been completed or not, and see at a glance the relationships between the pieces of the history information, thereby enabling an efficient management of the history information.